The present invention relates to a cutting tool to be used for a cutting work of honeycomb cores.
As a commonly used cutting tool for cutting honeycomb cores, there is a valve stem shaped cutter (hereinafter referred to as "valve stem cutter") having a sharp cutting edge like razor blade built along the periphery of a conical disk.
Since this valve stem cutter has no kerf on the cutting edge, it keeps in a linear contact with a workpiece during a cutting work, consequently this type of cutter tends to be burned at the cutting edge due to frictional heat. Further, differently from usual cutting tools, since the valve stem cutter cuts a workpiece like slitting or splitting by continuously applying an edge laterally, it needs a high rotational speed in nature. However, on the other hand, the feed speed can not be raised so much for the high rotational speed of the cutting tool, as a result in some case it becomes difficult for this type of cutting tool to cut the plate constituting the honeycomb core, if the thickness of the plate is large.
As an improved valve stem cutter, there is proposed a cutting tool for cutting a honeycomb core in which several splitting saws with a different diameter are coaxially heaped up so as to break tips produced from the splitting saws with a large diameter by the splitting saws with a small diameter (Japanese utility application laid open No. 1989-315).
However, the cutting edge of this splitting type cutter is not so keen as a razor edge, therefore there are such problems that a large cutting resistance is applied on it, burs tend to be produced on its cutting plane and a workpiece tends to be deposited on its cutting edge at high speed cuttings because it has a small chip pocket and a straight edge
On the other hand, as another type of cutting tool for honeycomb core which is different from the above splitting type cutter, there is an intermittent cutting type of cutter. For example, as disclosed in Japanese utility application published No. 1991-75922, there is a cutting tool having a disk-shaped cutter with a chip space and a radial relief angle at the cutting edge. The chip space of the disk-shaped cutter is integratedly connected to the chip space of the chip breaker. Furthermore, in order to raise a bite-in characteristic and at the same time to reduce a cutting resistance, an axial rake angle is built in the disk-shaped cutter along the chip space twisted towards the right hand and additionally a positive radial rake angle is built both in the cutter and the chip breaker.
This intermittent cutting type cutter has also disadvantages that surface finishing becomes poor and further a cutting work of high precision can not be performed efficiently because a work-holding of the honeycomb core on the machine tends to become unstable due to a vibrational force acting on the workpiece.